The Internet delivered the usual bewildering volley of emotions this week. In the one tab, we enjoy the invention and humor of photoshopped celeb tattoo pics, and in the other we peer at the near starvation of thousands in Syria. Our round up of the past seven days, save the make-believe ink fever, is a somber affair.

This week, a video-clip from the front lines in Kiev emerged that gets remarkably close and is remarkably blunt in its depiction of violence. The closest thing we have to a LOLcat is a rampaging man-eating leopard in India and the closest thing we have to a chatroom is your webcam hacked by the UK government. In Florida, a newspaper ditches photogs like its going out of fashion, but in NYC a raft of awards and finalists announced this week celebrate photogs like it’s the only fashion.

This almost unbelievable picture comes to us from Damascus, Syria, by way of the United Nations. Taken on January 31st, it shows a sea of people waiting for food aid at a UN Relief Workers Agency distribution point at the Yarmouk camp. It offers rare perspective as to the massive scale of suffering that continues in the country.

Some 20,000 people are reportedly trapped in Yarmouk as the Assad regime continues a siege that started in July (including the use of air strikes), searching for people they describe as “terrorists.” The siege is causing mass shortages of food. As a result, food distribution points like this one are overrun whenever they appear. As of this week, aid is suspended due to security concerns.

With little information coming out of Syria to provide a clear picture of what’s really transpiring, it may take images like this to effectively convey the scale of the tragedy that’s beset the country of some 23 million people since the uprising against Assad began.

Photo: UNRWA/Reuters. Residents wait to receive food aid at in Yarmouk, a Palestian neighborhood in Damascus which has been under army siege for eight months. Jan 31, 2014.

30-Second Video of Ukraine Sniper Fire Quiet and Terrifying

Last week, all eyes were on the culmination of Ukraine’s protests. This week, all eyes were on parliament to see if the new government would satisfy the protesters’ wishes. From within the constant stream of information keeping apace with rapid changes in Kiev emerged a disturbing video.

In the footage, French photojournalist Jérôme Sessini is bedded down behind a group of protesters. Already one man lies motionless in the foreground, presumably dead. At midpoint in the clip another turns slowly toward the camera and slumps. It’s not even obvious he’s been hit at first. Then his lurch toward the floor seems to happen in slow motion. The 30 second clip (which feels much longer) is altogether surreal. Is that a smirk on the fellow protester’s face? Of course, not, but it all feels so disconnected and random.

It is not random though. The man was picked off by a sniper. No blood, no explosion and no noise. Whiff. Just like that. We do not know if the man later died or recovered. As with most violence, it’s difficult to make sense of this video.

Image: Still captured from Jerome Sessini’s video footage.

30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch in 2014

Once a year, Photo District News (PDN) lists the thirty hottest and most promising talents in photography. This week, they published the 2014 PDN30 which includes young guns throwing down images in a wide array of approaches. Whatever the style — from documentary to studio, from editorial to fine art — you can be guaranteed these thirty anointed ones are doing something new.

We were amazed to find out that two of our favorite portfolios were by photographers who first published their photographs as citizen journalists via social media. Check out Phil Moore and Mosa’ab Elshamy!

Celebs, Icons and Cult Heroes Get a Tattoo Makeover

To our grandparents’ generation, tattoos were donned by drunks, sailors and circus acts. These days everyone has tattoos. We made early forays into inkdom in the nineties with tramp stamps and shoulder tats, and those easy-to-hide-at-work-tattoos soon gave way to sleeves and full back coverage. If you’re younger than 40 and alive in the 21st century, your a freakshow if you don’t have tattoos.

Our new favorite Tumblr, Shopped Tattoos, reimagines cult heroes from the past and icons from the present with tats. Jackie O, Audrey Hepburn, Mr. Spock are all gripped by ink fever. Perhaps, the picture of Wills & Kate is most shocking because it reminds us that they’re essentially prohibited from choice and prohibited from getting any (visible) tattoos. More here.

Photo: Cheyenne Randall/Shopped Tattoos

Heart-Stopping Images of Rampaging Leopard in Indian City

A wild leopard created panic and havoc in the streets of Meerut, India this week, injuring at least 7 people. According to The Atlantic, the big cat leaped from rooftop to rooftop, and fled into several buildings. After chasing it into a hospital, a movie theater and a few construction sites, local officials were still unsuccessful in capturing what was clearly a frightened and bewildered animal. The handful of images collected here are startlingly close to the action, and do a remarkable job of depicting the feline’s repeated bolts for freedom – and humans’ desperate attempts to get out of its way.

Florida Newspaper Latest to Ditch Its Entire Photo Staff

The National Press Photographer’s Association reported this week that the Orlando Sentinel’s photo department was told their current positions were eliminated, and they’d be asked to reapply for new positions within the company that focus more on video.

As newspapers continue to struggle for relevancy and financial stability in an ever-changing market, it’s disappointing to watch places like the Sentinel frantically fumble to keep up by removing one of the things that actually engages their readership and creates value for their product: photography.

Have we seen this formula end in better revenue for any paper previously? When the Chicago Sun-Times announced their staff photographers would be replaced by smartphones, it only took a couple of months before we saw a push to sell images (shot by their former staff photographers) a la carte from their archives even as their news coverage faltered.

That’s not to say that strong video content isn’t a smart idea for publications. Video, when used well, does engage the community and can drive traffic. However, when the plan is to “increase the quantity of video on the newspaper’s web site” with the use of iPads and iPhones, not only are you sacrificing quality journalism, you’re sacrificing your readership. Remember, Orlando Sentinel: your readers are smart, and they deserve quality work from you and your staff.

Smile! The British Government Has Been Recording Users of Yahoo’s Video Chat Service

It used to be that encouraging someone to tape up their webcam to keep the government from watching would sound like the paranoid advice of a conspiracy loon. Well, it might be time to bust out that tinfoil hat. In another discomforting development concerning governmental snooping, the Guardian has revealed that British Intelligence agency GCHQ, in cooperation with our friends at the NSA, have been watching and recording the webcam images of millions upon millions of users of Yahoo’s video chat service.

The program, called Optic Nerve, was started in 2008 and remained active into 2012, according to documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Snowden. The bulk images include many of a sexual nature, which the documents reveal were hard to keep GCHQ staffers from gawking at. The NSA has restrictions (for what that’s worth) on the kind of data they can gather on American citizens, but the GCHQ has no such restrictions, meaning these images very likely include the private conversations and interactions of British and US citizens.

The program was apparently meant to develop new techniques and algorithms for facial recognition and picking targets. It gathered (gathers?) one image every five minutes, possibly to avoid violating certain privacy statutes, but more likely to keep from crashing GCHQ servers. It’s one more in a long string of uncomfortable realizations about the deeply invasive spying apparatus Western governments are pointing at their own citizens. The revelations are likely to get worse, and it seems very unlikely that programs like this one are limited to just Yahoo or the UK — since Snowden’s documents only go up to around 2012 at the latest (that’s when he divulged them to reporter Glenn Greenwald), it’s also very possible this program is still up and running.

Image: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

Alexia Foundation Announces Its 2014 Winners

The Alexia Foundation, which gives annual grants to promising photojournalists, has announced its 2014 winners, and they are good’ns.

The professional grant was awarded to Sebastian Liste, who gets $20,000 to complete his series ‘The New Culture of Violence in Latin America.’ It’s meant to raise awareness about a rash of violence stemming from drug and weapons trafficking in Latin America, amid troubled transitions from military rule to democracy. The conclusion of the five year project will cover Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Iranian student Mehran Hamrahi won the student grant with his project ‘Iranian People, Ordinary or Criminals,’ a look at the ways Iranian youth strive to find freedom in lives that are governed under restrictive social norms. He’ll get half his tuition for the Syracuse University London Program, a $1,000 grant to pursue the project, and a $300 gift card for photo equipment — his academic department will also get $500.

231 photographers submitted their work and proposals for consideration this year. Stephen Dupont of Australia, and Pau Coll Sánchez of Spain were finalists. Alexia began in 1991 as a reaction to the death of 20 year-old student photographer Alexia Tsairis, who died in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. It’d be worth keeping an eye on the good work that Alexia and its fellows are doing, you can start by following them on Facebook.

Photo: Mehran Hamrahi. Mahnaz, 19, is trying to check her Facebook account in her room. Facebook and other social networks are filtered in Iran and the youth have to use VPNs to access these websites. Having an account with Facebook is a crime in Iran, and even it might lead to debarment of somebody from employment in state organizations. Selling VPN and anti filters to people is a crime in Iran and it is considered as action against national security. In case of discovery, the person will be confined and imprisoned. Ahvaz (Southern Iran), July 27th 2013.